THE Shield (C5) not only remains the best programme on television, it's getting better and better, bleaker and bleaker.

To recap, Det Vic Mackey's Strike Force team has been engaged in a war with Armadillo, a Mexican drug-lord who arrived in LA selling heroin to kids, raping one little girl and tattooing her face. (Armadillo is the bad guy.)

Having tried to run Armadillo back to Mexico ("pack up your s**t and get the next donkey home"), Vic grilled the side of his face on an oven ring. Ouch!

"Somebody did a job on his face," commented Vic's colleague, Claudette.

"It's an ugly world," Vic shrugged.

Armadillo then put a contract out on Mackey's crew, declaring that they had been "greenlit". Only in Hollywood.

Last week, Vic was just about to indulge in some inter-departmental diplomacy/hanky-panky when he was interrupted by the sight of Strike Force team member Ronnie lying by the hob, his face branded the same way. Damn.

The Strike Force team went to work, paying informants and rousting gang-bangers (not that kind). At one point, it looked as if Vic was going to chop off one gang member's fingers with a guillotine. His increasingly wide-eyed/crazy deputy, Shane, emptied his gun into a dead pitbull. It was that sort of morning. Armadillo responded by paying a visit to Vic's wife and kids.

Vic needed to get to Armadillo before Claudette did but Armadillo was brought into custody and set about blackmailing Vic for release by using the assault on his face. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Vic decided to come clean.

"I did this. I'll take all the heat."

But as luck (or Shane) would have it, Armadillo was shanked in the holding cell (ouch!) by a lower league Mexican drug dealer who needed the kudos bestowed by the hit - leaving Vic to get back to the serious business of busting heads, making money and cleaning up the streets. Seriously hardcore.